Who Would You Be?

It's a simple question—but one that has the power to change everything.

In this episode, we're talking about the roles we play, the masks we wear, and the subtle ways we begin performing for the people around us. Whether you're the "strong one," the perfectionist, the caretaker, or the person who always says what everyone else wants to hear, there comes a point when you have to ask yourself:

Who am I underneath all of it?

Together, we'll explore people-pleasing, the idea of becoming a "social chameleon," why authenticity isn't the same as oversharing, and how faith gives us the freedom to stop performing and start living as the person God created us to be.

If you've ever felt exhausted trying to be everything for everyone, this episode is for you.

Because the goal isn't to impress people.

It's to become so authentically yourself that your outside finally matches your inside.

Transcript

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Let me ask you a question. If you had no expectations on you from anything, not from work, not from friends, parents, siblings, whoever's in your life, whatever situation you have in your life, if you had no expectations, who would you be? If you could remove any form of performance from your life, who would you be? Hi, I'm Cheyenne, and this is Nothing to Prove. This is the podcast where we talk about life, whether it makes you feel great and grand, or whether it makes you face really uncomfortable truths about yourself, because I am also going through really uncomfortable truths about myself. So we are living them together. Last week we talked about attachment and attachment theory, and I have a feeling, because I've seen a lot of messages from you guys, the amount of you that had to take a good haunt, good, long, hard look in the mirror was a lot. And I love that you guys are taking so much accountability for yourself. And I'm gonna have you take it a step further today. And I am not here to coach you, I am just merely a guide of what it is that I've had to do to maybe make life a little less hard so that maybe you can learn from me and walk a little bit of an easier path than I've had to learn. So today we're gonna be talking about performance and who we are behind closed doors versus the expectations that are being pressed upon us in just everyday life. Okay. So for this, I'm gonna go back to when I was in radio a couple months ago for the last seven years. I was a major market radio personality. I did a morning show, it was awesome, we were killing it, and then all of a sudden I lost my job without any warning, without any reason behind it, and I landed here on this podcast just being a friend. Okay. But I realized a long time ago that people were loving me for the performance I was putting on rather than truly standing by the person that I am today. Performance can really hinder who you are as a person. And performance, a lot of the times, comes down to people pleasing. And I don't want you to be a people pleaser anymore because people pleasing tends to be a trauma response at some place in your life where you learned that you had to be everything for everybody and you had to give them exactly who they wanted you to be. And I don't want that for you. So there's a lot of things that we could put titles on as far as what we're gonna call the performer in our life. I'm just gonna call it people pleasing. We people please and we perform for the people that we're around, okay? So are you a strong one? Are you the strong friend that everybody comes to? But the reality is that if you could sit down in a room with one person for 10 minutes, you would cry because you're so tired of being strong for everybody all the time, because you're really not that strong, but everybody has forced you to be strong. Is that you? Are you constantly the funny one, even though being funny for whatever reason feels exhausting to you? Like you can never have a serious moment because everybody expects you to be the funny person all the time, right? Like don't sit next to John at a funeral because he's gonna do nothing but make you laugh. Well, maybe John is tired of being the funny guy, right? Are you the caretaker in your friend group? This is a role that I take on a lot. And I think for me, it truly comes down to just like my maternal instinct to just take care of everybody, and I want everybody to be okay. I want to make sure everybody has what they need. Um, so for me, I think that's more of just like I do that to myself. Are you a perfectionist? Because somewhere in your life, somebody demanded perfection from you. Somebody demanded perfection, and if you didn't have perfection, it meant that you were no longer a favorite. It meant that you no longer had access to somebody, and maybe you just want to not be a perfectionist. Maybe you just want to live in a mess for a minute, right? Maybe you're trying to be this Christian who never struggles with their faith. Maybe the persona that you're trying to put on is that God is constantly working miracles in your life and nothing is ever wrong and everything is great, which if you were a true Christian, you would know that that's not the case. Because if you knew, you would know that God is gonna put you through hurdles and struggles and he is gonna test you. And mind you, none of these things are necessarily bad, and I don't want you to go into this thinking that I'm trying to call you out on bad behavior or anything like that. I'm not, that's not what I'm doing. Okay, the problem is that we believe our worth depends on continuing to be this person and this persona that we're continuing to put out. And that's the problem. The problem is that for a lot of us, we think that if we aren't the perfectionist, we're not gonna be worth anything to some people. The problem is that if my husband doesn't come home to a clean house and dinner on the stove, and the idea that this cleaning fairy comes in the middle of the night to do his laundry, that he's gonna love me any less. Right? The problem comes from when we are constantly having to be funny rather than just having 10 minutes of vulnerability with a friend because we are afraid that our vulnerability is gonna make us less worthy of the laughs the next time, right? That's that's when it becomes a problem. Not that these are problematic, but that when we are afraid that our self-worth is getting lost in these, that's when it becomes the problem. And that is that is what we have to break, right? So when I lost radio, I had to take a look at myself and say, is the person that I was putting out on the radio still the person that I am today? So when I sat down to do the podcast, I really had to ask myself, am I gonna continue to give them what they've been getting? Is that actually me, or am I gonna give them a different level of me? Thankfully for you guys and myself, I had done so much work over the last couple of years on who my persona was on air and what I wanted to be represented as that I knew I was leaving radio and coming into the podcast being the same person. I truly, genuinely prided myself on hearing listeners meet me and say, you are the same person on air as you are in person. And that to me means more than anything because there was a long time where I struggled on air, maintaining a lane of the beliefs that I held because I didn't want to rock any boats and I didn't want people to hear something and be upset about what I was saying. So I would say an opinion and then I would double back and say, Yeah, but I guess I kind of also understand the other perspective of that. Like, let's just look at that as like a devil's advocate for a minute, which is fine to play devil's advocate, but when it's on every single thing, it started to become a problem. And I really had to look at myself a couple years ago and say, who do I want people to know me as? And the truth is, is that I want people to know me for my faith. I want people to know me for the relationships that I keep, and I want people to know the purpose that just thrives me, right? That purpose that drives me every single day to get out of bed. And these days it is my kids and it's my faith, and it's being here for you guys in whatever capacity that I can be here in. And the diamondbacks, of course. They're doing really well right now, okay? I'm really proud. But uh back to a serious note, like I I had to look at myself and I had to think about those things, and I'm really glad that I did. And honestly, I'm glad that I had a mentor that sat me down and made me look in the mirror and say, Cheyenne, you have to start picking your lanes because it's getting really hard to follow what it is that you believe and what it is that you are trying to talk about when you're when you're jumping lanes too many times. And that's where performance comes into play, right? When you're putting on performance, you're removing authenticity. Authenticity isn't oversharing, okay? Authenticity isn't being too much. Authenticity doesn't mean telling somebody everything at one clip and then we're trauma dumping dumping on somebody. That's that's not what authenticity is. Authenticity means that my outside is matching my inside, okay? Authenticity means that I'm not pretending. Authenticity means I'm not performing, it means I'm not hiding. It also means that I'm not changing who I am depending on the people who I am surrounded by in that moment. Okay. Authenticity boils down to not being a chameleon in a social environment. Cheyenne, what do you mean by that? And I am so happy to tell you. What it means to be a social chameleon is when you walk into a room with 50 people, okay, and they're all divided into groups of five to ten people, okay? And you start bouncing around and you're talking to everybody. Now you leave that space, and let's just say they did a review on you. Like everybody wrote a review about you, and every single person said, She's awesome. She agreed with everything that I said. Our per our perspectives and our views were the same. She was so accommodating. She was, you know, all of these things that made them love you. The problem is, is you're telling me out of 50 people in a room, every single view that they had, you also had. You're not only lying to me, but you're lying to yourself. Okay? That's not that's not how people operate. And that's not how people work. And that's not how authenticity works. That's how becoming a chameleon works. What does a chameleon do? A chameleon will adapt its color to find safety and protection and the environment that they're in. So when you become a social chameleon, you are literally adapting yourself to the people around you. You're people pleasing. You are literally people pleasing in order to maintain safety within the social confines that you're in. Okay. And that's what we have to get past. We have to get okay with not everybody loving every single part of us. If there are 50 people in a room and you've never met any of them, the chances of them liking you are high, right? The chances of them just enjoying your company are very high. That doesn't mean you have to abandon your faith, what you believe, your opinions, and your views on things for people to like you. In fact, people will like you more and respect you more if you stand by what you believe. Like my mom used to say this all the time in high school. I will never forget being told that I was a floater. I just get along with everybody. And I could sit, I could literally go into a cafeteria. This is not wrong. I could go into the cafeteria and sit at almost any table. I was in JR O T C. I was in band, I was a cheerleader. Uh, my brother was a star football player. Like, I was in every social group because I could be, because I adapted myself to be. I was a social chameleon all through high school because I just wanted to be well-liked. The problem with being well-liked is that you're never liked for you. You're liked for the person that you're performing for the group of people that you're with. Okay? Like, no, it's just you have to be so careful when you're telling your kids and your adolescents that it's okay, like, just be liked by people and you're just a floater and you can be around. No, we have to teach our kids, and now we have to teach ourselves as grown adults, that it's okay to not be liked all the time by everybody for every stance that we have. And it's okay to have different perspectives, and it's okay to have different points of views. Those things are what make us who we are as people, right? Those things are what sell you to people. My my best friend and I are two peas in a pod. Okay? Absolutely two peas in a pod. We are less than 12 hours apart for our birthdays. We are the same exact age. We went through so many of the same things in life, living on opposite ends of the country and never knowing anybody, never knowing each other. But it's interesting to me how she loves the parts of me that are so unique to me. And I love the parts of her that are so unique to her. Like if we were a Venn diagram, right? My I have a short thumb. You're not gonna see the Venn diagram very well. But if this was me and this was her, and then we Venn diagram together, and all of the things that we are similar in are in the middle, right? Which is a very big box because we are very, very similar. The things that she loves about me the most are the things that are in my own circle. That I've never had to hide from her, that I've never had to pretend to be something that I'm not. And one of the qualities that I love so much about her is her ability to let me be me. And to let me call her or text her, and I'm so appreciative of her, it makes me cry. I'm very codependent on my best friend, okay? And she knows this, and I know this. It's also where my attachment, I also have attachment issues when it comes to my best friend, okay? That's also something I want you. If you guys listened to last week's podcast about attachment, and if you haven't listened to it, you need to go back and listen to it. And I also need you to understand that attachment also shows up in personal relationships that are outside of romantic relationships, okay? It is not uncommon for me to text her and she doesn't text me back, and now I think she's mad at me. And then I have to try to find that reassurance. That is something that I'm also working on. So when I text her and I tell her, I just need to say something and I need you to not judge me. I just need to walk through this. I need to work through this, but I need somebody to listen because I'm either gonna need you to validate me or I need you to tell me to pull my head out of my my rear end, which is a very common occurrence. She will regularly tell me, I think you're over-dramatizing this too much, and I think we need to look at it from a different perspective. And we do, because I don't have to perform for her. I don't have to be somebody that I'm not, because I've always only tried to be me because I was so sick of having best friends, air quotes best friends, who loved the performative version of me. And my best friend prior to her, side note, it is okay to change best friends. And I need to make that clear. If you have had a best friend for a long time and you guys are not aligning, it is okay to step away from friendships and say this is just a season of my life that I'm not in anymore. I need to take a step, and if we want to reevaluate this later down the road, we can. It's no different than a relationship, right? Sometimes you just need space from people, and that's okay. My best friend prior to her, I had to perform so much it was exhausting. And Heather doesn't make me do that. I love her to death. I don't really even know. I try to mention her as much as I can because it's truly the only way that I can I can express to her how much she means to me and how much healing she has done within me that she doesn't even know that she's done. Isn't that crazy? Isn't it crazy to have somebody in your life who is not a romantic partner that you can truly look at and say, you have healed wounds you didn't even create? You have brought me into my own being when you didn't have to. How crazy is it that we are so blessed to have friends in our lives who cheer you on harder than anybody else in this world. Get you a friend that doesn't perform. Get you a friend that you don't need to perform for, because it will absolutely change your life. And another thing that makes performing not easy is truly knowing where your faith lies. Because if you know who you are for me, for me, knowing who I am in Christ, not in my career, not in my value that I get from other people, not in my relationship status, not from my achievements and the nominations and the awards, not from any of that, but knowing that I am exactly who I need to be in Christ and that I am walking the path that he wants me to walk makes authenticity so much easier. Knowing that God never asked me to impress him, knowing that he's just asking us to follow him makes it so much easier. And I will tell you, I was on my knees the other day praying to God to like give me some clarity. Show me where you're going because the enemy, the attack from the enemy is so heavy. It's not only heavy in my life and in my interpersonal relationships, but in my actual relationship, in my career, and where this podcast is going. It's so disheartening sometimes to try to do something and make money that is so reliant on other people that I was struggling. And I was tiptoeing around the idea of really diving more into being a TikTok influencer. And I had to ask myself if that really was the space I wanted to be in. Did I really want to be that performative all the time? And the answer was no. I don't. I don't want to be that person. I don't, I just want to write. I want to write books and I want to give speeches and I want to do this podcast and I want to make enough money to be comfortable. That's all. I just want to share my message. I want to sh talk about, I want to talk about God, I want to share my faith. I want to share what I know about authenticity. And God had to re-put that on my heart because the enemy was attacking me so hard to the point where I had to ask myself, should I go back to performing because it's just easier? Performing is just easier. That's why we do it. People pleasing is just easier. It's easier to just say, I'm gonna be this person that everybody else wants me to be because I don't gotta fight about it. I'm just gonna let this person bulldoze over me, and I'm just gonna say, okay, because frankly, I'm tired of fighting. No. I'm gonna stand up for what I believe in. I'm gonna stand up for my faith. I'm gonna stand up for my friends, I'm gonna stand up for my family, I'm gonna stand up for my relationship, and then I'm gonna stand up for myself within my relationship because that's what I deserve, and that's who God has called me to be. God has called me to sit here and walk you guys through what he puts on my heart because somebody needs it. I don't just come up with these podcasts because I feel like it's something that I want to talk about. I ask God what he wants me to talk about. And that's how we get here. Stop performing. Start being more authentically you, stop apologizing for it. Stop apologizing. Stop saying I'm sorry for things you shouldn't have to say I'm sorry for. That's crazy. Let's all take a minute to do a little bit of an internal inventory and say, have I been authentically me with the people I spend the most time around? And I'm gonna be willing to bet that the answer is no. No, you haven't. No, I haven't. And I'm grown enough to be able to say that, but I recognize it and I fix it as much as I can, right? And then you have to ask yourself, if you're a parent, are you allowing your kids to be authentically who they are? Are you trying to make them whatever it is you need them to be? Are you trying to make your kids emotional sandbags for you? Are you forcing your kids to show up in a way for you that is not fair for them? And therefore they have to be not themselves to be able to satisfy the person you're forcing them to be. Are you allowing your friends to be authentically themselves? Are you allowing your friends the safe place? And I'm I use safe space and safe place, not in the the term that you know we're using it so readily right now. Like, I need a safe place. That's not what I'm doing. I'm saying, are you allowing your friends a place that to find safety within you in the confines of your friendship to say, I'm not okay? I am really struggling right now. Are you allowing them that space? I'm gonna be willing to bet the answer is no. I'm gonna be willing to bet that some of your friends don't feel safe because they haven't been able to be themselves. And if you can find a way to allow your friends to be their full authentic self, you're gonna love them so much more. Your friends are gonna go from being just friends to being people you can't live without if you allow them to be authentically themselves. Because something interesting happens when people become so authentic. There is a weirdness in people that will inevitably come out when they're allowed to just be weird. When they're allowed to be themselves, you will see, especially men, the amount of weird that men turn into when they feel safe is insane. And it's one of my favorite because we're so used to men being this person that we're that that's protective and there's they have to be this socially stoic person all the time. But if you give the right man the right amount of safety, the right amount of comfort, the person he turns into will be one of your favorite people. I spend time with men all the time. You guys see me on the road all the time with my buddy Matt Ferris and his band. Those men are weird. They're weird. And the more I'm around them and the more safe that they feel around me, the weirder they get. And they're some of my favorite people on this planet. They're amazing. They're such a great group of guys. But they're weird and they're fun and they're funny, and they are charismatic, and they have a way with each other that is so genuine in a way that you only get comfortable and safe with people in the walls of a tour bus. And it is a beautiful thing. So if you have felt like you have to put on a mask, for lack of better terms, if you feel like you have to perform for the people that you're around, I strongly encourage you this week to do some internal inventory and give yourself a couple of days this week to really not be a chameleon, to just sit in your own beautiful colors and be who you are. All authentic you, all the realness of you. And if you lose friends in the process, guess what? They were never friends with you because you were being you. They were only friends with you because of the version you were presenting to them. Because of the person you specifically curated for them. And those aren't people you want, anyways. If they're only friends with you because they want the version of you that was curated for them, that's not what you want. So be okay with letting people go. Be okay in this season of being so authentically you that some that means that some of your friendships are gonna have to end, and that's okay. And I'm so excited for this journey for you. And if you let me, I would love to pray for you. Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for the person listening on the other side of this, Father. We thank you for giving them the realization that they could have been performing and could still be performing in certain aspects of their life, Father. And I just ask that you give them the courage to stand up and be so authentically who they are. I ask that you give them the ability to stand up and say, I'm a little bit weird, and that's okay. I ask that you give them comfort, that if friendships and seasons of those friendships have to end and change, that you give them the comfort to walk away, Father. I ask that you open their eyes to see, open their spirits to hear you, Father, to be able to walk a path of authenticity to who you are inviting them to be in this season of their life. Invite them in, light the path for them so that they can be who they fully need to be in you, Father. In your heavenly name we pray. Amen. Sheesh.